


Inside This Place Is Warm

by CosmicOcelot



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is a snake and thus is not good with cold temperatures, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:02:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicOcelot/pseuds/CosmicOcelot
Summary: Aziraphale rolls his eyes but stops short when a shiver wracks the demon’s body.“Crowley,” he frowns, gripping Crowley’s hand, “are you alright?”Crowley slips out of the grip with a twist of his wrist. “I’m fine, Angel—just cold, like I said.”





	Inside This Place Is Warm

Aziraphale loves the snow.

It falls, heavy and thick from the sky, like little bits of soft spun sugar, landing on one’s tongue with a deliciously crisp, cold feeling. He loves the way the air tastes, and the white sky, clouds thick with the threat of more flurries, brisk wind ripping along a frozen river. He especially enjoys watching all the interesting ways humans have come up with to manipulate it, be it building rounded men or leaving impressions of ‘angels’ in the soft powder.

He watches a group of youths throw compacted balls of snow at one another, a smile curling the edges of his lips, as his companion finally arrives, taking a seat next to him on the park bench.

“’S bloody freezing.” Crowley hisses, scowling at Aziraphale, “Why couldn’t we have met inside?”

“Because it’s snowing.” Aziraphale says, like it’s obvious.

Crowley rolls his eyes. “That’s my point, Angel.”

“Oh, grumble all you like, I rather like the snow.” Aziraphale holds out a hand and watches as a snowflake delicately flutters onto his palm. “It’s so…fresh.”

Crowley mutters something under his breath but his mood seems to have shifted somewhat, and he tips his head back to look at the fluttering flakes too, his breath coming out in a gentle fog that melts most of them before they can land his face.

Aziraphale’s heart quickens at the sight of the delicate white flakes standing out in sharp contrast to his red hair and black ensemble, and he coughs slightly, feeling his cheeks warm despite the cold.

“There’s a new curry shop that’s opened up around the corner from my shop. I thought, perhaps, we might go there for a meal? If you’ve nothing better to do with your time.”

“If that was your plan, then we could’ve just met in your shop, _inside_.” Crowley points out, but he stands up, offering a hand that Aziraphale doesn’t technically need to help him up, but one that he takes anyway. “But lead the way, Angel. Hopefully we can get there before my bits start falling off.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes but stops short when a shiver wracks the demon’s body.

“Crowley,” he frowns, gripping Crowley’s hand, “are you alright?”

Crowley slips out of the grip with a twist of his wrist. “I’m fine, Angel—just cold, like I said.”

“You really should wear more layers.” Aziraphale titters, but says nothing more on it, linking their arms together as they start to make their way to the restaurant, the lamplighters around them beginning their nightly work.

* * *

They make it to the restaurant without any more shivers from Crowley, who proceeds to down five cups of boiling coffee without so much as flinching and then a bottle of brandy on top of that. He has a couple of bites of Aziraphale’s curry when the Angel insists that he needs a second opinion to be able to identify the particular spice they used, but otherwise he doesn’t eat much—and though that is hardly out of the usual for Crowley, it makes Aziraphale feel a little… _unsettled_. 

After they, or rather Aziraphale, finish their meal they make their way back to the bookshop, where Aziraphale opens another bottle of brandy. He pours an equal splash of it into two cups of hot cocoa, before deciding to put another splash in Crowley’s for good measure; the demon had looked rather chilly on the walk back after all.

Crowley accepts the cup with a nod of thanks, but doesn’t drink it right away, just holds it in his hands as though he’s trying to absorb the heat right into his body, curling up into the couch a bit.

“Have you always liked snow?” Crowley asks, the slight slurring of his words indicating that the alcohol at dinner had indeed affected him. “Cause I…I don’t remember you talking about it before.”

Aziraphale takes a sip of his cocoa, considering the question for a moment. “Well, I liked it from the moment I experienced it for the first time, which must have been around…oh, I don’t know, several thousand years at the least. What about you? Have you always disliked it?”

“I don’t _dislike_ it.” Crowley protests, “It’s pretty and everything, the way it falls on trees and buildings and in the light, like the rain, it’s just…”

He trails off, shrugging, a bit of his cocoa threatening to slosh out of its mug, “It’s just cold is all.”

“Yes, so you said.” Aziraphale murmurs, before nodding at Crowley’s mug. “If you’re not careful that’ll be cold in a moment too.”

“What? Oh, right.” Crowley downs the mug’s contents in one go, setting it down on the table and pushing himself to his feet. “I’d best be off…got a lot of…” He waggles his fingers at Aziraphale, “tempting to do and all that. Thanks for dinner.”

“Oh,” The disappointment feels like a lead weight in his chest, warring with a steadily growing, fretfully fluttering worry, “well, if you’re sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s been—‘s been great and all but—” Crowley shrugs, “Duty calls.” 

“Of course.” Aziraphale says, walking to the door and holding it open for him, “Mind how you go, and…” He hesitates, “give me a ring once you get home, will you?”

Crowley’s eyes widen slightly, and he ducks his head as a flush that Aziraphale chalks up to the brandy blooms across his cheeks. “Yeah, sure, fine, whatever...”

“Thank you.” Aziraphale says, because it feels like he should, even if all he did is ask for a telephone call and not the re-painting of the Sistine Chapel. Would Crowley repaint the Sistine Chapel if he asked him? Probably, but he’d definitely make it outrageously blasphemous. 

Crowley nods, heading out into the frigid night air, taking a shuddering breath and for a moment Aziraphale considers yanking him back inside to where its warm and insisting that he stay—

But then Crowley is a walking away, and soon he’s nothing more than a dark shape moving further and further into the night. 

Aziraphale watches him disappear, closing the door with a shiver to keep whatever heat remains in the shop trapped before taking a seat next to the telephone; waiting impatiently for it to ring.

* * *

But it doesn’t. 

Three hours go by without a single call, and the slight fluttering worry from earlier has snowballed into a full-blown panic. As the seconds continue to tick by, he’s caught between the ever-growing urge to run out into the night after Crowley and the terrible thought of leaving only to miss a vital phone-call.

Eventually, he throws on his coat and marches into evening, the glacial air catching in his throat and lungs as he stops just short of flying down the streets of Soho. The district is mostly empty, and even if it weren’t there’s enough snow falling that the white of his wings could be easily overlooked, but he’d rather not draw any unnecessary attention to himself.

He’s barely five minutes away from the bookshop when he finds him, buried in a snowdrift, with only his hand visible.

_“Crowley.”_

The snow is gone with a snap of his fingers, and Aziraphale can see Crowley where he must have fallen and curled up hours earlier, the snow gradually burying him. His skin is pale, lips practically blue, with ice forming on his face and around his mouth and eyes, and he doesn’t react to the removal of the snow, just lies there unmoving with his eyes closed and— _heavens above_ —Aziraphale can’t tell if he’s breathing.

“Crowley,” He puts a hand on his shoulder and tries to shake him awake, but Crowley still doesn’t respond, “Crowley, for heaven’s sake, wake up!”

Aziraphale gives him one last shake before giving in to the fact that this isn’t working and tucking his arms under Crowley and lifting him up, wincing at the temperature of his flesh—it’s like trying to cradle an iceberg. He snaps again, fumbling for a moment between balancing Crowley and the numbness in his fingers, and the two of them are back in the shop.

Crowley’s clothes are soaked from the snow, dripping onto the bookshop floor, and Aziraphale debates putting him on the couch before deciding that the bedroom upstairs would be better—more blankets available and _well_ , he thinks dizzyingly, desperately, _heat rises, doesn’t it_ —so it should be the warmest part of the bookshop. And that’s what Crowley needs right now, dry and warm, there’ll be time later when, and it’s _when_ , not _if_ , he wakes up to shake some sense into him

He carries him up the stairs to the flat above, miracling his wet clothes away and replacing them with some extremely warm and fluffy nightclothes, before placing him on the bed. He runs his hands over his body to try and bring warmth and, hopefully, _life_ back to the limp form.  
  
But though the normal pallor of Crowley’s skin returns but there is no movement in his chest, no sure and steady rise and fall, and for a dreadful, heart stopping moment, Aziraphale is suddenly confronted with the possibility that he failed—that he didn’t reach him in time and now it could be untold millennia before Crowley returns—if he returns at all—and he can feel a scream gathering in his throat, hands clutching Crowley’s shoulders as he wills him with every fibre of his being to just _breathe_ —

And nearly falls over in relief when he does, chest slowly rising and falling.

Aziraphale slumps down onto the bed next to him, trying to get his own breathing back to normal, and he glares at Crowley with the threat of, well, a _rather good talking to_ when he wakes; but his hands shake as he tucks the blankets around him carefully. Though whether that’s from the exertion or something else entirely, doesn’t bear looking at right now.

“You,” Aziraphale tells Crowley, voice wavering with emotion as he addresses the being now sleeping peacefully and no longer _freezing to discorporation_ alone in the _streets_ , “are an absolutely _wretched_ thing. I don’t know why I bother.”

Crowley mumbles something unintelligible in his sleep, shivering slightly, and Aziraphale snaps up an extra blanket for good measure.

* * *

  
“Aziraphale?” 

The angel starts awake at the voice, opening his eyes to see yellow eyes, bleary with sleep and confusion, staring back at him.

“What happened? Why were you—” Crowley makes a vague, sleepy gesture with his hands, gradually becoming more and more awake. “Thought your lot didn’t go in for that.”

“They don’t, and I wasn’t.” Aziraphale protests, pushing himself up to a sitting position. “I was merely… _resting;_ after _somebody_ decided they were going to do their damned best to try and discorporate themselves.”

“Discorporate?” Crowley blinks at him, awareness slowly starting to dawn in his eyes. “Oh, right, the snow.”

“Yes, the snow.” Aziraphale lays the back of his hand against Crowley’s forehead, checking for any ill effects remaining from his tumble into unconsciousness. “Would you mind telling me, exactly, _what the hell you were thinking_?”

Crowley shakes off the hand, which is fine because Aziraphale had already determined, to his immediate relief, that there was nothing wrong. Instead of answering the question, however, he sits up, wrinkling his nose as he looks down at the outfit that Aziraphale had placed him in.

“What the heaven is this?”

“I had to get you warm and your other clothes were soaked.” In retrospect, the fluffy, white nightgown was perhaps not the most matching thing to Crowley’s personality but, well, he’d had rather more pressing matters on his mind than _style_ when he’d summoned it up.

Crowley rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers, the nightgown becoming a great deal less fluffy and much more…slinkier, black, and significantly less warm.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale reminds, ignoring the heat the outfit generates within himself, and looking at the demon pointedly.

“Yes, yes, I know, I heard you.” Crowley sighs, reclining back into the bed and tucking the blankets around himself to ward off the chill morning air. “Look, I get…cold easier than most people, and when I get cold I get tired and when I get tired I…” He gestures towards the bed they’re in, “You know.”

“No, I didn’t know.” Aziraphale says, rather sharply, which he thinks he’s entitled to be after everything that transpired last night. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”

Crowley scowls. “I didn’t think it needed to be brought up—” 

“Oh really?” Aziraphale snaps, “So, if I had a condition where whenever the wind blew a certain way I found myself diving off of cliffs, would you be alright with me keeping that to myself?”

Crowley’s brow furrows. “ _Do_ you have a condition where whenever the wind blows a certain way you dive off cliffs?”

“No, but that’s not the point.” Aziraphale pauses, struggling to fight back the emotion rising rapidly within him. “I thought…last night, I thought I might’ve been too late and…I thought that you were… gone.”

There’s silence between them, heavy and thick, and Aziraphale can’t bring himself to look at Crowley right now, his eyes beginning to feel rather wet.

“Angel,” Crowley says, whispers, really, but it comes with all the weight of an oath. “I would’ve been back. Be harder than that to keep me away.”

“But what if you—” Aziraphale breaks off, hands clenching into fists, “what if you _couldn’t_ come back? If they decided to keep you there, lock you away or—” and he’s starting to cry in earnest now, tears slipping down his cheeks, “ _hurt_ _you_ and I would just be left here, waiting and wondering, uselessly, about all the terrible things they could be doing to you.”

He turns to look at Crowley then, anger blazing in those wet eyes, takes in the way the demon is staring at him, eyes wide like they had been on the gate all those years ago, regarding something, someone, entirely new. “Did you ever, once, stop to think about that? About what it would do to me, being left here with you—?” He breaks off, not able to bring himself to finish the sentence, let alone the thought, “What if I’d done what you did? Just laid down in the street and let the snow bury me—”

Crowley sits up and reaches out a hand carefully, ever so, and brushes the tears away from Aziraphale’s face, before gently raising his other hand to hold his face and meeting his gaze with his own.

“I’m sorry.”

Aziraphale doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, and Crowley rushes to add to the apology. “I should’ve told you about the whole—thing—with the cold I just…I didn’t want to seem…weak, or like a bother—” He pauses, his cheeks flushing slightly, “’Suppose that’s rather ironic now.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes and presses Crowley’s hand to his mouth, hearing the demon’s breath hitch as he does so, and just…holds it there. Breathing in the demon’s scent over and over again to try and calm down, to assure himself that it’s alright, that he’s here with him right now.

When he finally speaks, he moves his lips so that the reply is audible, but still murmured into Crowley’s palm.

“I forgive you.”

The tension seeps away from Crowley in an instance, only to be replaced with a new kind as Aziraphale opens his eyes and lets go of Crowley’s hand to grasp his face instead, pulling him into a desperate kiss that channels all the feelings that have been bubbling within him for the last night—and heaven who is he trying to fool—the last thousands of years. It’s exactly like he imagined it, but oh, so, so much better. The way that their lips meet and part, Crowley snaking a hand around Aziraphale’s neck and back to pull them even closer, his hands running over Crowley’s body and feeling the heat rising between the two of them. Crowley drinks in the touches like a dying man, desperate to drown in the feelings they inspire, hands grasping and searching out Aziraphale fervently, and the angel feels something similar, eager to reveal more of Crowley’s skin and revel in the way that it slides against his own.

“Angel,” Crowley breathes, caution on his lips, “Aziraphale—”

Aziraphale silences it with another kiss, slipping his tongue in to taste Crowley further and finding unsurprisingly, that he enjoys that as well.

He’s moving to tug off Crowley’s nightgown when the demon catches his wrist.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley insists, “What are we doing?”

There a thousand answers to that, but to Aziraphale the most poignant one is that it rather feels like the two of them are coming home.

“I believe,” He says instead, “that the humans call it sex, if you would be so amenable?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Crowley says. “Is it…is it just this or—”

Aziraphale runs a finger along Crowley’s collarbone, fascinated by the whole new type of shiver it inspires. “I think, that I would rather like it if, well,” He clears his throat, “we could um, perhaps be _together_ outside of this as well, more so than we already are, that is. Because I—”

He takes a deep breath, preparing himself for a plunge he’d never thought possible. “I love you, my dear, and it…it would mean the world to me if you did as well.”

“Could hardly be called a demon if I didn’t love myself too much.” Crowley says, because of course he does, and Aziraphale sends him a withering look that is too exasperatedly fond to be of any use.

Crowley reaches up and fiddles with the buttons on Aziraphale’s jacket. “But just in case that isn’t what you meant, I—” His voice wavers for a moment, but he pushes on, meeting Aziraphale’s eyes with such wonder and longing that it makes the angel’s heart ache. “I love you too, Angel.”

“And I think,” He continues, popping one of the buttons open, “that I’d really like to see you without all these clothes on.”

Aziraphale snaps his fingers and the clothes are gone.

Crowley frowns. “I was looking forward to… _unwrapping_ that.”

“There was rather a lot to unwrap.” Aziraphale replies, reaching for Crowley’s nightgown again, only for it to disappear with another snap and he shoots Crowley a petulant look of his own, which the demon meets with a smirk before flipping them over so Aziraphale’s back is on the mattress and Crowley is hovering over him.

He presses kiss to Aziraphale’s body, lips gradually moving further and further down, starting at his lips, then his chin, his neck, chest, stomach, thighs, until—

Aziraphale gasps as he feels Crowley’s lips wrap around him, being taken further into the delicious warmth of his mouth, moaning aloud as he feels his clever tongue work him over. He tangles his hands in Crowley’s hair, watching the steady bopping of his head as it tears cries of pleasure from his lips.

“You’re…rather good at this.” Aziraphale breathes after one particularly toe-curling movement, because he can’t quite think of anything else to say, “Had a lot of practice?”

It occurs to him what he’d said only when Crowley pauses in ministrations, releasing Aziraphale with a smirk, flush high on his cheeks and pupils blown wide.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

And he would, he finds, feeling something alarmingly close to envy at the thought of Crowley doing this to others, or of Crowley having the same thing done to him, moaning and gasping like Aziraphale had been under someone else—

He brings the demon in for a searing kiss to rival hellfire in its passion, and presses a biting, sucking kiss to his neck; there’s a nervous energy thrumming through him as he does it, trying to recall the pages he’d read about it on, but it feels wonderful, as does the way that Crowley shudders in his arms, biting back a moan. He presses more of them along Crowley’s shoulder, gradually making his way up Crowley’s neck.

“Angel,” Crowley murmurs, twisting away slightly, “careful not to go too high.”

It confuses him for a moment, before he remembers that these kisses leave marks and that there are limits to what a neckline can cover.

He sucks a mark into the junction of Crowley’s jaw, teeth catching on the skin as Crowley hisses appreciatively.

“Feeling territorial, are we?” Crowley drawls, raising an eyebrow at Aziraphale as he pulls back, which would hold more weight if he didn’t look so debauched.

Aziraphale kisses him in answer, and Crowley lets him, deepening the kiss as they enjoy one another languidly, before pulling away and sucking sharp kisses of his own into Aziraphale’s neck.

“Pot calling kettle.” Aziraphale murmurs back, running his hands up and down the demon’s back, and Crowley gives him a nip with perhaps more teeth than strictly necessary.

Crowley draws back, snapping and unscrewing the cap of a bottle when it appears in his hands, coating his fingers with the liquid within before slowly pressing his fingers inside to stretch himself out, keeping his eyes on Aziraphale the whole time.

The angel’s mouth is dry, eyes caught on the absolute masterpiece he makes, working himself open, and he trails his hands all over his body, brushing over his nipples and loving the gasps that he can draw out with a slight tug, fingertips traveling down, down, until they brush against the most sensitive part of Crowley. And the way that his head goes back, mouth open in a delicious moan sends a thrill up Aziraphale’s spine, makes him grip it tighter, drawing his grip up and down in a slow steady motion that has pleas and pants falling from Crowley’s lips like drops from the sky during a rainstorm.

“Angel,” Crowley groans, “ _Aziraphale_ , stop.”

He draws his hand back and that’s when Crowley guides Aziraphale inside him, and oh— _oh_ —he screws his eyes shut, absolutely wrecked by the breathtaking sensation of being in Crowley. 

Crowley takes a moment to get used to the feeling, breathing around it all, before moving and if Aziraphale thought it was good before, that is _nothing_ compared to the way it is now, the delicious slide and friction between the two of them as Crowley rides him, head tipped back and mouth hung open in perpetual moans that sound torn from somewhere deep within him. Aziraphale is aware of the moans slipping past his own lips, as his hand comes up and grips Crowley again, stroking him like he had been before.

Crowley lets out a choked moan, body trembling with a frisson of pleasure, and his hips hitch slightly before he sets about redoubling his efforts, fucking himself on Azirphale’s dick and into his hand. And Aziraphale feels the pleasure building like a gathering storm within him, the air charged with energy as it waits for lightning to strike.

“Aziraphale.” Crowley barely manages to form the name. “ _Aziraphale_ —”

And then he’s coming apart, shaking his way through the pleasure washing over him, and Aziraphale barely has a moment to appreciate it before his own pleasure crests, nearly bowling him over with its intensity.

They stay there for a moment, clutching each other as they struggle to get their breath back, before slowly, Crowley slides off of Aziraphale lies on the bed next to him.

Aziraphale reaches out and tucks Crowley’s back against his chest, wrapping them together with a contented hum.

“Angel,” Crowley murmurs, and he sounds sleepy again, “we have to clean up—”

Aziraphale snaps his fingers and burrows further into Crowley’s neck.

The demon huffs. “You keep that up and you’re going to get another note from Gabriel.”

“Perhaps.” The Angel replies, enjoying the warmth of Crowley against him, but at that precise moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything other than the feel of the two of them wrapped together, tucked away inside; safe from cold flakes still steadily falling outside the window.


End file.
